


Patch Job

by kittydesade



Category: Plunkett and Macleane (1999)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene between Macleane getting shot and Plunkett feeding him afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patch Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joylee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joylee/gifts).



It was just like before. And the time before that. And what on God's name had he done to deserve this, anyway? First Mary, then Rob, and now Macleane, the poor bastard. Consumption or Mr. Chance, it didn't matter, they all died in horrible ways with him staring on and unable to prevent it. 

Macleane was rambling by the time they got to their building. At least it was dark enough no one saw the blood.

"Useless, you know that?" Will ranted as they tottered up the stairs, making enough noise that young gentlemen poked their heads out of the rooms they'd hired long enough to determine that it was just Macleane coming home drunk again, and nothing worth bothering over. "You're bloody useless and even more bloody stupid. You should have given up hours ago, and no one would have been the wiser, you know? They don't pay as much attention to you as you think."

On the floor beneath them, someone snorted and called agreement, and called Macleane a rude name besides. Will kept going, showing some teeth and babbling now more out of nerves than a real feeling that he needed an excuse to be carrying Macleane up the stairs.

He dumped the taller man on the couch for the moment, as good a place as any and closer to the door than the bed. "Stay... just, stay there." Not as though Macleane was able to move. He might not even be conscious. Will couldn't tell.

Far too much experience with this kind of wound, he didn't want it, hadn't even wanted to be this much around pistols in the first place. "Wasn't my idea, you know, it was Rob's," he muttered to the unconscious man. "First time I went out and did someone I had a knife. Worked all right. It was Rob's idea to use the pistols, after we took down a few birds for dinner." 

At least he thought it had been Rob's idea. That was hazy now. He could barely remember his young friend's face, and he wished he could. More than anything, because that would mean that if Macleane died of his injuries now he would remember him too, and as dippy an idiot as the younger man was he didn't deserve to die like this. He needed a slap across the head, not a bullet in the belly. 

"Consider this your final warning," he told Macleane. From across the room, because he had to focus and make the poultices that would draw the poisons out of the wound, then the salve that would keep new toxins from entering it in the first place. 

He didn't know Macleane was even awake until the slurred voice came from the couch. "Warning for what?"

Will didn't look up from his tools and mixtures. "For being a bloody idiot and starting a fight, that's what," he muttered. Loud enough that Macleane could hear, not loud enough to be yelling at him, because it wasn't the poor bastard's fault he got shot. And it wasn't Will's fault that he kept getting missed. It wasn't. He'd gotten shot by Chance. In the arm, still, and he'd had the use of his arm a fortnight later, but it wasn't anyone's fault. Except Mister Chance. 

Will looked up and back over. "Yeah, you just rest there..." he murmured. Macleane had fallen asleep again. 

A knife, where'd his knife go. He had to cut off Maclean's jacket and shirt, cut it away and get at the wound properly, and make sure there were no scraps of fabric left to rot. Painstaking work, but better than burying bodies.

He stopped, he told himself, to reach for the jar, but it was really stopping to wipe his face with the back of his sleeve. To wash his hands and scrub the dirt from his face and let himself make believe the water dripping down his cheeks was the wash-water. This wasn't what he'd studied and apprenticed and practiced for. He wasn't meant to be a surgeon. Wasn't meant to have life and death under his hands, at the barrel of a gun or for other men's money. This wasn't him. "It's not me," he whispered, his hands still moving because this was urgent business and he couldn't afford to stop for his own comfort. "This isn't me, I don't take from those what can't spare it."

"Course not," Macleane mumbled. "We're highwaymen, we're not thieves."

Will laughed. It was stupid and it completely missed the point of the thing, but it was sweet of him to try. And he didn't point out what he'd started to wonder, that if these nobles had jewels made of paste and glass, might be they couldn't spare as much as they thought. Funny how that was, looking up from what everyone thought was the bottom of the heap, they always looked like they had it so good. But these rooms had more drafts than his shop and its tiny dwelling above it ever had, and all the high ceilings and long walls only brought his attention to how little they had.

"We're thieves, you daft bastard. Go back to sleep."

"I wasn't asleep," Macleane said, and promptly passed out again. 

Will bundled him up as best he could, bandaged him and set a poultice on his seeping wound. The bleeding had stopped, now it was just trickling out of him whenever he moved too much. That was enough to be going on with, and he'd sit for a bit of a rest and then sling the taller man's arm over his shoulder and hobble him to bed if he could manage to wake Macleane up. In the morning, if he was lucky, he wouldn't have the faintest idea what had gone on. 

And better that way, because when it was all done and there wasn't much left but for Macleane to gather his strength a bit more, Will dropped his head on his folded hands at the table and had himself a good cry. For himself, for Macleane, for a young apothecary with a beautiful wife and the handful of children they'd never had the good fortune to have.


End file.
